An Exquisite and Lethal Mind
by Ell Roche
Summary: The last time Tony closed his eyes, all he could see was the darkness of space and a huge alien ship headed to Earth. As Fury had pointed out, Earth was hilariously out-gunned. And even though Tony vowed to never create weapons again, the thought still niggles him in the back of his mind. They could be attacked at any moment, and he would be able to do nothing.


**Title:** An Exquisite and Lethal Mind

**Pairings:** Tony Stark/Darcy Lewis, and Tony Stark/Pepper Potts

**Summary:** The last time Tony closed his eyes, all he could see was the darkness of space and a huge alien ship headed to Earth. As Fury had pointed out, Earth was hilariously out-gunned. And even though Tony vowed to never create weapons again, the thought still niggles him in the back of his mind. They could be attacked at any moment, and he would be able to do nothing.

* * *

Darcy Lewis hated Pepper Potts. And she knew that no one would ever believe her if she said so, because everyone just _loved_ Pepper to death. Pepper was put together, polite, beautiful, and blah, blah, blah. She did, though. Hate Pepper, that is. She loathed Pepper Potts so much that she avoided the woman whenever she was in Avengers Tower, because Darcy just knew that she would tase Pepper right into the hospital if she ever met the woman face-to-face.

"Wretch," Darcy muttered.

Pepper was the most heartless woman she had ever met in her entire life, and that was including some girls that she had been forced to share dorm rooms with over the years. How else could she describe someone who was never around to support the man who so desperately loved her?

"Where's Pepper?" she had asked Tony Stark her first week in Avengers Tower. She had been dying to meet a woman with so much power and poise.

That desire died when Tony said, "Off being my CEO." His voice was flippant, but his eyes were haunted. There were bruises on his face, and peeking out through the sleeves and collar of his shirt. The Chitauri invasion had been three days previous, he had flown a _nuclear bomb_ through a hole in the sky to another galaxy, and Pepper had left him to recuperate on his own to run a business!

Who in the world did that?

Later that night, she hacked into JARVIS. Just a little bit, mind you. He was amused at her attempts, and basically let her in. But she decided to count it as hacking. "So, what's going on between Tony and the wretch who deserted him?" she asked JARVIS.

There was a minute or so of silence, and then JARVIS said, "Mr. Stark attempted to contact Miss Potts by telephone while carrying the nuclear bomb. Miss Potts did not answer."

Darcy didn't have to possess Tony's IQ to realize that his AI was ticked off on his behalf; she had never heard a computer sound so disdainful in her life. And she could understand why JARVIS was so upset. His father, for lack of a better term, had been blown off by the woman he loved to distraction in what would have been his final moments—if the law of gravity hadn't yanked him back onto Earth just before the portal closed.

"Man, she's worse than the iPod Thief!" Darcy snapped, once she regained control of her jaw.

Darcy had been following Tony's work since she was twelve years old and realized what she could do with _math_. He made it all right to be a childhood genius. The heckling was a pain, especially as she developed, but that didn't stop her from getting her Ph.D. in Theoretical Mathematics at seventeen. He had inspired her to press forward and ignore, to the best of her ability, the jealous idiots that surrounded her in college.

Of course, if anyone asked she was a "Political Science" major. It was so much simpler to pretend she was an utter idiot. That way people didn't expect as much from her. Jane Foster thought she was only good at making Pop Tarts, and couldn't understand any of the equations. And Eric Selvig treated her like the annoying kid next door whose bike you shouldn't _accidentally_ run over.

But yes, Tony had always inspired and encouraged her from afar. Those weeks he was missing in the Middle East, she was glued to her laptop and TV, waiting for news of his rescue day and night. She didn't doubt for a second that he would return. He was _Tony Stark_!

Unlike most people, Darcy wasn't disillusioned by her hero. Tony was a playboy; his numerous and public liaisons were splashed across tabloid and newspaper headlines on a weekly—sometimes daily—basis. So when Tony announced that he was in a committed relationship with Pepper Potts, Darcy assumed that Pepper must be the most amazing woman on the planet.

Oh, how terribly wrong she had been.

_Pepper's a cruel, often absent_—Darcy took a deep breath and released it. She hated how worked up the whole situation made her, but there wasn't much she could do about it. Pepper had been back for maybe two entire days in the last four months, and it—plus something he hadn't shared with Darcy yet—was wearing on Tony.

"Enough is enough," Darcy stated. She stretched like a cat, arching her back, and got out of bed. She wasn't getting any sleep, so there was no point in wasting her time lying there. Her T-shirt was old and worn, threadbare in parts. It was bright green, with Donatello's purple mask emblazoned across her chest. She wore shorts the same shade of purple, and fuzzy green socks.

"May I help you, Miss Darcy?" asked JARVIS.

"JARVIS, buddy, where's Tony?" Darcy asked. She took a hair-tie off her wrist and pulled her chestnut hair up in a messy bun. She didn't bother putting on the attitude glasses; Tony had seen her without them countless times and loved being 'in' on the joke. It was just glass, not a prescription; she wasn't blind in the least.

"Mr. Stark is in his laboratory," JARVIS replied. There was a frustrated edge to his voice, as if he had been trying to coax Tony out of it for hours or days on end. Knowing Tony, that was all-too-likely.

"I've got it, JARVIS." Darcy walked to the elevator on her floor, which opened itself like on Star Trek as she approached. After she entered, the doors slid shut and it whooshed into motion. She got off at Candyland, a.k.a. Research and Development.

The lab that Bruce and Tony shared was empty, the lights off. Eerie shadows seemed to skitter across the expensive equipment inside. Darcy rolled her eyes and continued to Tony's personal lab. She had been watching too many horror movies in the hope of scaring Captain America to death. Tony had promise to take her somewhere for every time she made Steve Rogers shriek like a little girl.

Darcy knew that anyone who overheard their deal would assume she was a gold digger—out to abuse Tony's hospitality. It was quite the opposite, though. She was doing it so that she would have an excuse to get him out of his lab. He became more hermit-like with every passing day.

After setting her palm on the scanner, the door to Tony's lab opened silently. It was the only lab in the building that didn't have glass walls. And she was only allowed entrance because JARVIS liked her. Bruce also had access. Everyone else, even Hawkeye, had failed to infiltrate Tony's "_Super Secret Lair of Genuine Awesomeness"_.

She grinned as she remembered the time Clint Barton had attempted to sprint in after her; JARVIS had shut the doors so fast that he had looked even more like a hawk for a couple of weeks afterward—courtesy of a broken nose.

AC/DC blared, and Darcy started swinging her hips to the beat. Tony had excellent taste in music. His back was to her, shoulders slumped, hands twitching, hair messy, as he stared at the hologram in front of him. Darcy tilted her head so that she could see it better, and then stopped between one step and the next. Tony was ogling blueprints for some type of plasma cannon. The Stark logo was on the upper right hand corner of the spinning hologram, assuring her that he was its creator.

Where had it come from? She had never even heard of it before, and Tony's weapons were ridiculously famous worldwide.

He flicked his left hand through the air and another blueprint appeared. It depicted a small handgun, boring in appearance by Tony's standards. The bullets were what shocked her: corrosive acid. Tony flicked his hand again. Darts filled with poison; she didn't recognize the chemical compound. Another flick. Grenades filled with pitch and a miniature laser to ignite them. And another. An energy whip with coiled garrote wire as a handle. Tony's fingers flew faster and weapon after weapon zipped through the air, their beauty taking her breath away.

His mind was exquisite and lethal.

"Planning to start a war, Tony?" she teased.

Tony snapped his fingers and spun around so quickly that he almost fell over. The blueprints vanished in an instant, and the music stopped. His eyes were wide with shock, so he clearly hadn't heard her enter. His shoulders slumped as he took a step backward, away from her, eyes trained on the floor as if he thought she would berate him like a little child.

"No," he whispered, voice raspy. "Course not. That would be . . ."

He continued to stare at the ground, not even casting a teasing or lecherous glance at her rack. What in the world had happened? What was wrong with him?

Steve's voice surfaced in her memory. "Miss Potts left this morning. She was upset. Who knows what Stark did now?" And Pepper hadn't been back to the tower since then. Had she walked in on Tony looking at the blueprints of all those weapons and stormed out because of it? But why? They were sublime! If that was the case, how couldn't Pepper appreciate such stunning creations?

If she hadn't already been crushing on Tony's brilliance, this display of divine ingenuity would have sent her tumbling over the edge. As it was, she could honestly say that she loved everything about Tony more than Jane loved Thor, and she had never thought she would be able to say that.

Darcy decided to test the waters. "Let's build one," she said.

Tony's head snapped up so fast that she heard his spine pop. The bruises under his eyes were massive, eating away at his cheeks now. It looked like he hadn't slept in weeks, or months. Perhaps he hadn't. His ability to resist human needs—eating, sleeping, etc.—was legendary. "What?" His voice cracked.

"I said let's build one! I want the sexy whip. It'll go great with the Iron Woman suit you're going to build me," Darcy said, lips curled in a smirk. It was her fondest daydream. She had taken down Thor! She could totally kick some villain's butt!

"I can't!" Tony yelled, hands reaching out to grab her shoulders. "No, no more weapons. Weapons are bad. They hurt people," he mumbled. "If I build any, then you'll leave too."

The last sentence sucker-punched Darcy in the stomach so hard that she "oofed". No way. No fricking way! Pepper Potts had left him because he had lovingly created magnificent weapon designs? What was wrong with the woman? She growled in her throat, and Tony flinched away from her. What in the heck had Pepper been thinking? How could she turn _Tony Stark_ into this weak, cowardly man who was terrified of his own genius?

"I can't build weapons, or Darcy will leave. Like Pepper left," Tony whispered, as if he didn't even remember she was standing right in front of him. "But it was so black, and so dark, and so scary. . . . There were so many of them. And an alien turtle-whale ate my suit. And I died. _I died again_. And I couldn't do anything to stop them. But maybe with a plasma cannon I could—no, Tony! Stop it! Weapons are bad. But if I only used them to save people . . . but what if someone stole them, like Obie stole the original suit? Like Obie stole the Arc Reactor." His hand clutched over the glowing reactor protectively, like a child with its favorite teddy. "But if I load JARVIS into them, JARVIS could turn them off if they get stolen. But what if JARVIS gets hacked? JARVIS can't be hacked. And if I had a—"

Heart heavy in her chest, Darcy brushed away her tears with one hand and put the other over his lips, stopping the rambling monologue. Is this what had been bothering him? Is this why he wasn't sleeping? Darcy swallowed and blinked. The second her eyes closed, the Destroyer danced behind her eyelids, spewing fire and leveling the town she had lived in for months. She could only imagine how horrible it had been for him to fly through the portal, thinking he would never come back, seeing what he had seen on the other side, all the while knowing that Pepper hadn't answered his call.

Perhaps no one loved him. Perhaps no one would remember him. Perhaps he would just _die_.

Tony's brow furrowed as he stared at her fingers on his lips; his eyes almost crossed as he did so. Then his gaze trailed up her arm and settled on her face. "Darcy?" he asked, as if he had forgotten she was in the room and didn't remember talking to her before. He forced a jovial smile on his face. "What're you doing here?" He rocked back on his heels and leered at her chest. "The girls look good in purple."

Darcy pasted a smile on her face and tangled her fingers with Tony's. "Thanks, Tony. Come on then." She tugged on his hand and led him from the room.

He protested vociferously, but didn't struggle one bit. "Aww, but I'm busy. I have things to do, Darcy. Where are we going? Can't you just lean against my desk all sexily and let me have something nice to look at while I work?"

Darcy laughed as the elevator doors closed behind them; it sounded husky in the enclosed space. "Maybe tomorrow, Tony." She hated how fake Tony sounded. She hated that his heart wasn't in the flirting, that he didn't mean it—and sometimes she could tell that he really did mean it. But, most of all, she hated Pepper Potts for ruining Tony's belief in himself, when he had survived so much in his life.

He blurted out, "Really?" sounding more like himself than he had in over a week. His eyes were wide, his jaw slack.

"_Maybe_," she stressed, before pulling him out onto her floor.

Tony glanced around. "Your floor, Darcy?" He smirked. "Want to have your wicked way with me? Sheesh, so forward. You know, you should ask a man before dragging him into your bedroom, Darcy."

She winged an eyebrow upward and looked over her shoulder. "Why?"

Tony stumbled, but she caught him and guided him into her bedroom before pushing him gently down on her bed. "Uh, Darcy?" Tony asked, eyes confused but intrigued. "You never gave any indication you'd like to sample a Stark."

Snorting, Darcy knelt down and removed his shoes. He was beyond punch-drunk now. He swayed on her bed. She slid his belt out through the loops and dropped it on the floor before unbuttoning his trousers. "Lift up, Tony." Instead of giving her another wisecrack, he glanced away shyly and lifted his hips. She pulled his jeans off, leaving him in a Black Sabbath T-shirt and silk boxers.

Darcy climbed on the bed, which was several feet off the floor. Okay, so it might have been suspended from the ceiling on chains, because she once told Tony in passing that would be awesome. When she got home that night, it was done. She scooted upward until her back was pressed against the mountain of pillows she couldn't sleep without. When she had trouble sleeping, she would use them to build a fort around her and pretend nothing could get through it.

"Darcy?"

"Come here, Tony." She beckoned him closer.

Instead of crawling up the bed with a sexy, confident swagger, he scooted toward her on his butt. Was he always like this with a woman he genuinely cared about, or was it something else Pepper had changed about him? If it were the first, then Pepper made even less sense to Darcy than she ever had before.

"What do you want?" Tony asked, fingers twiddling nervously.

"A hug," she replied. Seeing Tony Stark like this made her want a hug desperately, and not just for herself. He would ogle and grope and leer and smirk, but something she had noticed within one week of meeting Tony in person was that he never asked for a hug—not even when he really, really needed one. She often wondered if he had become so accustomed to people wanting more from him that he assumed such simple comfort was taboo.

His brow wrinkled. "That's it?" His tone was disbelieving, as if her request didn't compute.

"Yes, Tony," Darcy whispered, "that's it."

Tony leant forward slowly, cautiously, as if he was waiting for her to change her mind and make demands of him. She didn't say anything. He rested his head on her chest and then glanced up at her, silently asking if it was okay. Darcy simply smiled at him and folded one arm across his back before burying the other in his messy hair. Even though it was dirty and greasy, she didn't care.

Darcy loved Tony Stark. And if he needed her to pet his filthy hair, or his bloody hair, or his alien-entrails-splattered hair, then she would oblige.

He hugged her after melting into the bed alongside her. "If I . . ." Tony tensed, but continued. "Would it be okay if I built weapons?"

"Tony, I'll help you," she assured him fervently. She was nothing like Pepper Potts. She understood how cruel it was to tear apart a genius's children; attempting to limit genius because you didn't understand it was pathetic.

"So . . . if I do decide to build weapons . . . you won't leave?" The question was heartbreakingly tentative.

Darcy kissed his forehead. "I'll never leave you, Tony," she swore. She had never broken a promise in her entire life, and she knew that Tony knew that. It had never been and never would be her way.

As a broken "thank you" accompanied tears against her chest, Darcy promised herself that she would protect Tony for the rest of her life, whether he wanted her to or not. He was exceedingly fragile, and she knew how to handle him with the care he deserved.

"You're safe, Tony." In her arms, he was.


End file.
